Gaza
"To raise a son, not from her own body, for thirty years—nobody accepts this easily. But my biological mother was under a lot of stress; I was one of triplets. So my aunt volunteered to raise me as her own. She never got married; it was always just the two of us; that’s why I call her Mom. She was like an angel-- she did everything for me, took care of every need. She used to pray for me all the time: ‘Allah yarda ʿalayk.’ This is difficult to translate, but it means: ‘May God be satisfied with you.’ All the time she prayed this. And God was listening. The rest of the family thought she spoiled me too much, and I would never amount to anything. For a while it seemed like they might be right. In university I tried to major in English commerce but I got stuck on it, and failed out of school. It made my Mom look bad. My other siblings were very committed, very religious— so it seemed like she had bad luck raising a kid. But she never gave up on me. She kept praying: ‘Allah yarda ʿalayk.’ When I changed my field to nursing, she tried to discourage me. She’d been a nurse her whole life, so she knew how difficult it was. But I told her: I want to be a nurse too, so I’ll always have something to remind me of you. I did my best and got very good grades. When I got a job at the hospital, I treated many of our relatives. They’d return home and tell my mom: ‘Wow. Yehya took care of us. He got us everything we needed.’ This is what she had always prayed for- for people to say good things about me. It’s all she ever wanted, and she got to see it. With my salary I helped her buy a new house. It’s gone now, it got bombed. But we were able to live there for two years together. She got to meet my daughter Zainab, who I named after her. She got to see all these things. She passed away right before the war, thank God. She would not have been able to handle it. And she died exactly how she wanted to die. It was sudden. Maybe a stroke, or an embolism that stuck in her heart. And I was there; I got to hold her in my arms as she passed away. If you’d have asked her how she wanted to die, she would have told you: exactly this way. It’s what she always prayed for. And God was listening."
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